Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre is pleased to announce the Eva Koch scholars for 2019. These are:
- Alfred Wasike
- Kathleen Bell
- Jane Booth
- Jenny Vickers and Brett Fletcher
More details about each of our scholars and their area of research can be found below.
The Scholarship dates for this year will be Monday 29 July to Friday 23 August 2019.
The terms of the scholarship cover a four week residential stay at Woodbrooke, as well as use of its library and staff resources. To be eligible, applicants must have an interest in a particular aspect of Quakerism and be willing to disseminate their work to the wider community of Friends.
For more information, please contact learning@woodbrooke.org.uk
Alfred Wasike (Friends Church Uganda (Quakers) Yearly Meeting) – Church giving and the UN Sustainable Development Goals
Alfred Wasike is an award winning professional Journalist in Africa. He is the General Secretary of the Friends Church Uganda (Quakers) Yearly Meeting, the FWCC Africa Publicity Chairperson, a Member of the FUM-Africa Board, and Communication Director at the FTC Kaimosi Kenya where he is studying for a Bachelor’s degree in Theology. He went to schools in Uganda including the prestigious Uganda Management Institute in Kampala. He won a UNESCO scholarship to study Journalism/International Relations/Russian language at Varonezh State University (1985) in Russia (then Soviet Union). He is a Senior Member of Professional Media Organisations in Africa.
Alfred was born in a Quaker home in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda on January 7, 1965. His late parents worked in Uganda and Kenya, and were senior Quaker leaders.
Through his Eva Koch Scholarship, he is exploring ways of how the Church can promote the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals to help raise giving in the Church in Africa. He is very grateful to the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre for this God sent opportunity.
Kathleen Bell (Beeston LM) – When Quakers got it wrong
Quakers tend to focus on the good bits of Quaker history – but Quaker history is more complicated than that. Kathleen will prepare a 6-week discussion pack for groups and Meetings to use under the challenging title of ‘When Quakers Got It Wrong’. Subjects addressed are likely to include Quaker slave-owners and arms traders, attitudes to gender and sexuality, exploitation of workers and difficult questions of privilege and power. The discussion pack aims to enable groups of Friends to learn together from the past in a way which will inform attitudes and actions today and in future.
Kathleen is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing with wide-ranging interests which include James Watt and the Lunar Society as well as working-class writing and history. Most of her writing is poetry and fiction. Her interest in privilege and power stems in part from her working-class background. She joined Friends 35 years ago, having attended her first Meetings in her teens. As a member of what was once a very small Meeting, she has on occasion been the only person present at a Sunday Meeting for Worship – but as the Meeting grows it no longer depends on her weekly presence.
Jane Booth – (Friargate LM/YFGM) – Membership experiences
How do Friends make the decision to (or not to) become a member of the Society? What are their experiences of coming into membership? How does membership shape their Quaker identities and help to build community? Through conducting surveys and interviews with Friends, Jane hopes to investigate membership as a deeply personal but collective experience, exploring common themes including including the hurdles and worries prior to membership, reflections on the membership process and the rewards and responsibilities membership brings.
Jane has had a growing involvement in Quakerism over the past few years. She recently took on the role of Elder Trustee at Young Friend’s General Meeting and has recently started her own process of coming into membership at York Area Meeting. She will finish her maths degree in June and is excited to be taking part in the Quaker United Nations Summer School and the Eva Koch Scholarship before starting a teacher training programme in September.
Jenny Vickers and Brett Fletcher (Sheringham LM/Norfolk & Waveney AM) – Be patterns: an audio-visual celebration of Advices & Queries
Their collaboration of music and image is inspired by and based on the distilled wisdom of Quaker values that is Advices and Queries. Their aim is to reach the heart and spirit rather than the intellect, to help re-imagine the words and inspire Friends and seekers alike to look at them afresh. The visual elements of this project are conceived as aids to meditation upon the texts, and will share a common format, for example as mandalas or yantras, and in the manner of the Advices and Queries themselves build one upon another.
They envisage the project entailing:
- live performances of a song cycle augmented by projected images
- CD and art quality book
- being accessed as an online resource
- images also being available in outline as a mindful colouring book
Jenny Vickers: became a Quaker after moving to Norfolk in 2004, before which she lived in a variety of Christian communities with her family. She is a musician who has recorded four solo albums, featuring her own settings of Celtic prayers and blessings. She is an experienced singer and composer who has performed to many different audiences across the country over the last ten years.
Brett Lightwait Fletcher: first attended Quakers after the birth of his son, 29 years ago. He came into membership in Huddersfield (Brighouse West YorkshireAM). He is a visual artist, creating intuitive and transformative artworks in a wide variety of media. Between 2011-13 he was artist in residence at Huddersfield Quaker meeting house and then lived on a croft on the western isles.
Jenny and Brett met at Woodbrooke in 2017 when they were both serving as Friends in Residence.
